


And the Healing Has Begun

by Draco_sollicitus



Series: After EpIX [6]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Force Healing, Post TROS, Rise of Skywalker compliant, TRoS Spoilers, after the war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:07:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22024567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: In the hours after the Battle of Exegol, the Resistance celebrates.Poe Dameron needs something more quiet, weighed down by the past years and the grief he can't quite shake, even in the face of their victory. And when he seeks something more peaceful, the Force brings him to a certain Jedi who is also struggling in the aftermath of the war.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Rey
Series: After EpIX [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1575733
Comments: 19
Kudos: 186





	And the Healing Has Begun

**Author's Note:**

> RISE OF SKYWALKER SPOILERS
> 
> Rey force heals Poe's arm that's it, that's the story, nothing to see here but ridiculous prose and Soft Times for Damerey
> 
> (for beccaboom who wanted more ForceHealing of Poe's arm headcanons)

Poe doesn’t seek out a whole lot of people during the celebrations. He and Finn had sat together for some time, quiet in their reflections of the day, but Finn had been pulled away by Rose to introduce Jannah and describe their terrifying mission to bomb a Star Destroyer by hand, on horseback. Poe hadn’t sought anyone else out after that.

There’s someone else, of course, someone he wouldn’t mind seeing. But, he has a feeling he kriffed it up too badly for her to want to waste a second on him. She’s the hero, after all. More than any of them - and Poe thinks she  _ should  _ be at the center of attention, but she’s nowhere to be found. Knowing what she went through today, what she came back from: no. He won’t be bothering her.

Poe stares into the flames of the bonfire, listening to the whoops and cheers of people left living, and he closes his eyes and thinks of Leia. Of Snap. Of Han, of Paige, of Tallie, of Muran, and maybe even of Ben. People he’ll never see again, who’ve been lost to this war. The image of the fire lingers behind his eyelids while he whispers to the Force to guide them all home.

He gets up and walks away through the thicket. It isn’t Yavin 4, but his father taught him too well of navigating jungle in the night to be afraid of the dark now. Poe steps over bushes and vine, dodges thorns and rocks, and eventually comes to a clearing where the moon shines brightest.

She’s standing there. 

She looks like one of those angels, the ones smugglers come crawling back from the Outer Rim with stories of: in her white tunic and leggings, Rey glows with a light that’s holy, and Poe thinks for a moment he might have to shield his eyes. 

She stands with her face tilted back to the stars, her eyes closed; she seems to be whispering something, and he sees her feet are inches from the ground. He is a trespasser here, blundering into something sacred, something personal, and Poe turns to go back the way he came.

And then: “...Shouldn’t you be celebrating?”

“Not feeling much like celebrating,” Poe answers, pivoting to look at her.

Rey wears starlight like a crown of silver, and she is wreathed in the galaxy when she smiles at him, eyes open and feet touching to ground once more. 

“Why is that?” She grips her wrist and rubs the bone there, and he sees a horrible bruise under her thumb, a purplish-black in the moonlight. 

He moves forward without thinking. “I think if I were younger, I might feel more like celebrating.” Poe shrugs. “But now…”

“But now,” Rey says and it sounds like agreement.

The bruise under her thumb is gone; Poe blinks twice and thinks he must have dreamed it.

“Now a lot of my friends are dead.” His voice goes beyond breakage with the last word. Rey’s hand twitches toward him, but that must be another trick of the moonlight. “My father’s comms are down, so he might think  _ I’m  _ dead until I can get off this moon and to the farm. And-”

He shakes his head, frustrated. 

“And … you can’t be with the person you love?” Rey looks to the stars again, and Poe thinks if there was a lot left of his heart to begin with, after Muran, after this Force-damned war, it’s shattered now because Rey lost someone today, too, even if he can’t  _ begin  _ to understand that. Even if it breaks him in half to think of her loving someone like -

“With Zorii, I mean.” Rey’s looking to her hands now, and even in the darkness, her ears are tinted pink.

Poe blinks, and the galaxy rotates to a different angle. “Uh.”

“You know because. You … you two were -” She waves a hand. “And now you’re … not.”

“We’re not,” Poe agrees faintly. 

He forgets sometimes that behind the majesty and power and wonder and beauty, Rey of Jakku is a girl. Young, naive, hopeful, good. She’s a lot like him before the war twisted him up inside; he prays to the Force nothing inside her twisted ‘til it broke today.

“So you can’t celebrate.” Rey folds her hands behind her back, and behind her calm mask there’s an intense panic he can read in her eyes from a stone’s throw away. 

He walks closer, just to be sure. 

“You can’t celebrate because … you would want to celebrate … with her.”

“Zorii’s at the party,” Poe points out, his lips twitching upwards in amusement. “Saw her dancing with Babu Frik.”

“I bet he’s quite a dancer.” The galaxy spins again and Rey’s smiling.

“The best,” Poe laughs. He tilts his head and asks a cruel question. “Is there … someone you wanted to celebrate with?”

Rey’s face closes off, if only a little. “I thought so,” she murmurs, quiet enough that he forgives himself for leaning in to listen. “But … no, it’s not like ... “ She looks at him and then back to the stars, and now her cheeks are stained pink, too.

Poe recognizes the feeling that sits heavy in his chest, expanding with the silent speed of a quasar; he recognizes it from the battlefield this afternoon when the Destroyers went offline forever. 

It’s hope that beats in his chest; it’s hope the war wasn’t able to kill. Hope fills the heart of Poe Dameron and keeps it beating and keeps safe the spark that ended the war. 

He thinks now, that spark might have a new keeper.

“If Zorii is at the party … why are you …” Rey gestures around the clearing. “Not at the party?”

“No Rey.”

“No Rey?”

Poe laughs, and they sway a half-step closer to each other, tangled in a dance they’ve been skipping some steps in for almost a year now, but the war is over and Poe thinks they might have the time to learn it the whole way through now.

“Not much of a celebration without Rey,” he says.

If he thought she emitted light to compete with the stars before, he sees now he was wrong: Rey blushes and shines at his simple words, and Poe feels, maybe, like he might be good for something. 

_ Did your heart break today?  _ He wants to ask.  _ Tell me, and I’ll fix it. I’ll make you laugh. I’ll fly to Chandrila for a diamond ring. I’ll stand on my head and recite Huttese poetry.  _

_ Tell me your heart broke, and we can work on putting it back together. _

Rey of Jakku does not look like her heart is broken; she looks more whole than Poe Dameron can ever recall being. She smiles with her eyes, starlight gleaming from her every atom and he remembers that people are as luminous as the stars above. And if all things are beautiful in the Force, Rey is the most beautiful of them all. 

“This is the longest we’ve ever gone without fighting,” Rey points out mildly, and he notices that her eyes are as gentle as they’ve ever been with him: they were this soft when she teased him and called him difficult; they were this soft when she asked if he’d been a spice runner; they were this soft every step of the journey, but he’d been too caught up in war to notice.

And now they aren’t at war.

“I can fix that,” Poe jokes, and draws himself up, finger raised, as though he might start yelling.

Rey laughs. The stars shine. They can’t, could never, compete.

She laughs and then stops short, her fingers trailing to the bandage over his arm. Poe’s surprised to find they’re standing this close; he’d been drawn in, step by step, pulled into the gravity of this most perfect star. Rey runs her fingers lightly over the bandage, and even though it still throbs and burns, Poe closes his eyes at the touch, especially when the pads of her fingers brush against his arm in passing.

“Can I-?” She tugs on the edge of the bandage wrapping and Poe nods without fully knowing what he’s nodding for; Rey slips the bandage from his arm, unravels it bit by bit, and he studies her face, glad to have an opportunity to look at her here in the quiet.

“This looks like it hurts,” Rey says, skimming her fingers around the patch of skin unbroken by blasterfire. Poe shivers. “Oh. Sorry.” She glances up at him, half-smiling and apologetic, and Poe’s breath catches.

He can see the moon in her eyes. 

“It’s fine,” he remembers to say, and Rey tsks in disbelief, smirking and shaking her head as she places her hand next to the wound. 

He swears she whispers  _ I hope this still works  _ but he’s too busy staring at her to question why; his skin is warm under her touch, beyond the kind of warm a blasterburn might inspire. Poe thinks it’s because Rey is touching him, not poking him with a hydrospanner and nudging him with her hip so he clears the corridor in the Falcon, or tugging on his shirt impatiently when he won’t get out of the captain’s chair: her palm presses against his arm, and her eyes flutter shut, and they are close enough to share breath.

Poe thinks he can feel every bit of the galaxy in this moment.

Her eyes flutter open, and Poe wants to kiss her, but instinctively he knows that while they have time stretched out before them, this moment is not that time.

“There,” Rey murmurs, stroking her fingers over his arm.

It doesn’t hurt.

He glances down in surprise and sees unbroken, tan skin where once there promised to be a horrific scar. 

“How did you-” He looks back up to her, and Rey smiles secretly, her nose wrinkling in delight the way it does when she fiddles with a droid or gets an extra portion of veg-meat in the mess. 

“The Force,” Rey whispers, raising her eyebrows and giggling. “The Force did it.”

“I think  _ you  _ did it, Sunshine,” Poe argues, and he knows that as impressive and all-powerful as the Force is, he’d rather have Rey in his corner any day of the week. 

Rey ducks her head with a smile, and Poe lets the moment sit between them, as soft as it is heavy, gentle and powerful, beautiful and terrifying. This moment, this intake of breath after the fighting is over, this stillness apart from the others’ celebration feels wrought with something unnameable, unknowable. 

But Rey of Jakku lifts her eyes to his face once more, and Poe thinks perhaps the Force intends for them to heal, and heal together.

And why would a pilot try to argue with the Force? He’s done enough arguing for a lifetime.

**Author's Note:**

> THANK YOU FOR READING


End file.
